A prophet in their own country: Meditiation on Luke 4

                In a time such as ours, the idea of prophets seems either odd or quaint, and you can measure this by asking the question even of yourself:  what would you think, if someone walked up to you, and claimed to be a prophet?  Most of us, myself included, would either laugh out loud, become very skeptical, or perhaps both.  Now, imagine that person who just came up to you and claimed to be a prophet, was a kid you went to grade school with—someone you knew growing up to be very human, and having all the same struggles you did coming through school.  I imagine, that would make it even harder to believe such a person, when they tell you that they’ve come with messages from God.

                Of course, this is exactly what Jesus did in our reading for this Sunday.  Jesus came into the synagogue, where all the people were gathered for weekly worship, and did what Hebrew men were allowed to do—He read from the Scriptures, and then expounded upon them, making clear the truth that was contained in those sacred readings.  And as He did so, the people were both amazed, and a little offended.  Jesus’ exposition of the Scriptures, that a particular element of Isaiah’s prophecy was fulfilled in their hearing, meant that He himself was fulfilling this ancient prophecy.  Those gathered together in the synagogue knew Jesus had been out in the countryside, healing and teaching, and calling people to repent of their sin, for the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand.  But many of those people in the synagogue knew Jesus from His youth—this was His home town.  They knew him as he stumbled around Joseph’s work shop, and did his chores at the direction of His blessed Mother.  They knew Him, either as a childhood companion of the same village, or as the child growing up alongside their own family’s children.  And so, even though the teaching Jesus brought forward from the Scriptures pricked their hearts, their own sinful pride and rebellion caused them to derisively dismiss Jesus with the rhetorical question, “Isn’t this just Joseph’s son?”

                Of course, we know that Jesus was only under the care of Joseph, being Himself the Son of God.  But Jesus doesn’t correct this misconception quite yet.  Rather, He addresses their unbelief regarding the Word of God, and those who bring it to the people.  He reminds them that in the days of Elijah, the people being unfaithful and unrepentant, the Word of God still stood, and was still brought to those who would hear it, by the prophet God sent… even if the only ones who would hear and believe, were foreigners, and outside the visible confines of the Mosaic Covenant.  The people hearing Jesus got the point, and they were enraged.  They couldn’t stand to hear Jesus accuse them of unbelief, and so they drug Him out of town to kill Him if they could.  But as it was not Jesus’ time to give His life as a ransom for the sins of the world, He passed through the midst of them, and went His way.  But this lesson He taught, has been written down for every generation to come.

                And what is that lesson?  The bearer of the Word of God is not measured by his earthly circumstances, but by the Word he carries.  The messenger is not weighed upon his own authority, but of the One who sends him.  Jesus affirms this principle when He sends out His Apostles, and advises them that when they speak His Word, anyone who hears the Apostles, actually hears Jesus.

                We are wise to sit and hear Jesus’ teaching on this point, rather than to rebel against it.  It doesn’t really matter what uniform the messenger is wearing, or where he came from—if that messenger is sent by God and bears the Word of God, we ought to listen.  Because at the end of the day, we’re not listening because we like the speaker, and we’re not searching for some cool new sermon series that he might be able to craft into PowerPoint slides.  We are the people of God by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, and His Word is life to us.  We hear the bearers of the Word, because of Him who sends it—because of Him who is the Word made flesh, and Who continues to dwell among us, full of grace and truth, sending out His emissaries in His Name to preach repentance and the forgiveness of sins.  Amen.

The Lord our Righteousness: A meditation on Jeremiah 33:16

                When the Lord accomplishes His will for His people, He said they shall be named:  “The Lord is Our Righteousness.”  Jeremiah heard these words while sitting in prison, and awaiting the awful judgment that Israel had called down upon itself through sin and rebellion to the Word of God.  The great captivity in Babylon loomed large on the horizon, and to the prophet’s eyes, it must have seemed an unrecoverable situation.  The land would be lost.  The temple would be lost.  The City of David would be lost.  The people would become the slaves of a pagan empire, formed in their culture, and steeped in their false gods.  But to the prophet’s despairing sight, comes another vision—one of redemption and salvation.  A remnant restored to the House of Israel, with joy and celebration and glory forever given to God.

                But how can such a thing be?  Only faith could receive such a message of hope, in the face of such awful circumstances.  Jeremiah knew that he and his people would have no hope of restoring themselves, and any pretense they might have had to save themselves would be dashed by the swords and chariots of foreign armies.  The Children of Abraham had sinned greatly, and more than deserved their judgment—but in their judgment, they could see plainly, that they could not save themselves.  In the depths of their dejection and humiliation, they could finally see, that they could hope in only one Savior, rather than the works of their hands or the schemes of their imaginations.  Under the curse of their torment, would come the knowledge of their condition:  they had fallen short of the glory of God, and were condemned by their own hands.

                It is a lesson we should learn, in our day and time, too.  When we sit in luxury and wealth, we often delude ourselves into thinking we can save ourselves.  We think we can find the right diet plan to make everything better; or the right drug; or the right therapy; or the right technology; or the right companion; or the right politics; or the right… well, fill in the blank.  We think “science” will save us, by crafting cures for our diseases.  We think politicians will save us, by crafting policies for our providence.  We think technology will save us, by creating tools for our weakness.  We think mates will save us, by slaking our lust.  We think we can save ourselves, by marshalling all these petty gods and more, as we craft our own destiny according to our own will.

                But eventually, it all comes crashing down.  Cures fail.  Policies fail.  Nations fall.  Lovers leave.  iPhones die.  And when we come to the end of our proverbial rope, we shall stand naked and exposed before the void of death, to pass that threshold like all the mortals who have come before us.  None shall escape the coming enemy—that foreign power, which approaches to some faster, and others more slowly, will besiege the city of your body and soul, and work its power upon you.  Eventually there will be no medicine, no technology, no person who can save you.  You will meet death, and you will be ravaged by it, left with nothing your hands have built.  For naked you came into this world, and naked you shall leave.  It is a fate we have earned through our evil and pride, and it will inexorably come.

                And for us, as we watch the approach of that ancient foe of the human race, it is only a heart of faith that can hear God speak words of comfort to us, that He will bring back the prisoner, the captive, and the oppressed—He will free those who could not free themselves, and in the streets of His Eternal City, there shall be rejoicing forevermore.  Where the scourges of death left devastation and corruption in their wake, The Lord God Almighty shall bring forth life, forgiveness, and hope.  Where we sit in darkness, the Lord shall break through with unimaginable Light.  In the face of our enemy, who takes away all our presumptions and delusions about saving ourselves, our Saving Lord brings forth that which we cannot do—He works our salvation for us, and gives to us that which we need to live forever.

                And this is exactly what Christ has accomplished for His people, and the reason why He came into the world.  For we who sit in darkness, have seen His Great Light.  We who see the approach of our enemy, see Him who triumphs over our enemy through His life, death, and resurrection.  We, who have nothing to offer for our own salvation, receive Him who is our salvation:  Jesus Christ.

                And so, though we may sit in darkness, we ought never to fear it.  Let the enemy of mankind come, as ferocious as he will—our Champion has conquered him, and promised to redeem even us.  There is no darkness that can withstand His Light, and we have been made children of His Light by faith, though we dwell in a dark, dangerous, and unbelieving world.  His Word has washed us, and made us clean, delivering to us the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation we lost so long ago.  His Word enters our ears, and gives us faith to believe, to see beyond the grave into blessed realms immortal.  He dwells with us by His Word, feeding us on His very Life, to sustain us in this earthly struggle against sin, death, and the devil.  And He is our Conquering King, who lays low the enemy of our race, that His people may rise to eternal lives of joy and peace.  We are the people He has made into His image, that we may sing forever:

THE LORD IS OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS!

All glory be to our Lord and Savior, who has done such great things for His people!

Amen.

A Meditation on Psalm 16

“O Lord, You are the portion of my inheritance and my cup;

You maintain my lot.”

As a citizen of the United States, there’s no other time that I feel more out of synch with the world, than in the heated run up to an election.  Everywhere, from every quarter, there is a voice calling for this and against that, to do something and abstain from something else, to endorse one and vilify another.  This pattern is not new in our day, though our technology (and our constant connection to it) makes it seem ever more present and overwhelming.  And even if you cut the power off to your house, drown your cells phones, and give your laptop a lobotomy, someone would be banging on your door or putting signs up around your neighborhood, to ensure you heard their pleas.  The world is a political place, and it always has been since the fall.

                Now it’s true that there have been better and worse political constructs and characters over the course of centuries, but the basic rules still apply.  Gather the force of will to implement your positions, build political alliances, and overcome your adversaries—often with little or no moral compunction.  Machiavelli made a science of this, but he certainly wasn’t the first.  When the world seeks power, it uses the tools it’s familiar with, and just does what comes naturally… often leaving a great deal of character assassination and destruction in its wake.  The world, functioning as it does under a Theology of Glory, seeks power and might through the means of man—and when fallen man seeks his own glory through his own fallen faculties, he can end up creating an image of hell on earth, in varying levels and degrees.

                The Church of Christ, however, has never been called to function like this… not because we aren’t capable of it (just look at your own church’s beauracracy, and you’ll know what I mean,) but because that’s not who we are.  The Church is filled with sinner-saints, who have been ransomed out of the world, living by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, who has given His life that we might live in Him.  As such, we’re not exactly of this world anymore… we are not even our own, since we have been bought with the precious Blood of Christ.  We are children of God, joint heirs with Jesus of all the wonders and blessings of heaven.  We are citizens of the Kingdom of God, adopted into the Father’s family through the sacrifice of His Only Begotten Son.  We are free indeed from this world of sin, death, and corruption, because the Son who abides forever, has made us free.

                Of course, this creates quite the discord for the Christian.  Like all the other earthly citizens around us, we remain in this world, serving out our vocations as God has given them to us.  Like the unbelieving world, we’re citizens of nations, states, and communities, and participants in the political processes that the world brings about in the rule of society.  But unlike the unbelieving world, we know that our time here is temporary, and that our allegiance is first and foremost to the King of the Universe.  We do not use the earthly tools of fallen man to seize power or seek our own glory, but rather, inspired by the love of God in Christ, we use the gifts we have been given to serve and care for our neighbor.  We seek not our own good, but the good of others, even though it may cost us something… or cost us everything.  Because, unlike the world that derives its inspiration from a Theology of Glory, the Church receives all the blessings of life, forgiveness, and salvation from the Theology of the Cross—the Cross through which our Savior triumphed over sin, death and hell, and by which we are saved from the same.  The Christian is an ambassador of a distant Kingdom, made present in the Word and work of Jesus Christ—in the preaching of the Gospel for faith and repentance, and in the receiving of Jesus through His Sacramental means of grace.  What we have freely received, we freely give to a world lost in darkness and despair, bound up in the sins of fallen man, and blinded by the eyes of unbelief.

                So, the Church can feel out of synch with the world, when the world is doing what comes naturally in its sinful state.  But that’s our cross to bear, as the Lord Jesus Christ has not prayed for us to be taken out of the world, but that we might be preserved in the world—so that we may be reflections of His Light and Life into the darkness.  And even this is not our own work, but it is His continuing work to reconcile the world to Himself.  Just as Jesus has saved us and sustained us by grace through faith, so too He calls the world to faith and repentance, through His Word given through His people.  We should not be surprised when the world does what it does, nor should we be discouraged—Christ still reigns, and will reign for all eternity, in both heaven and earth.

                Be of good cheer, and take heart, beloved child of God—He shall not leave you, nor forsake you.  He will not let His holy ones suffer corruption, even as He did not let His Holy Son linger in Sheol.  Whether we are here in the body or at home with the Lord, He is our life, our sweetness, and our hope.  All who put their trust in Him shall never be put to shame, regardless of the world’s maneuverings for glory and power.  The Lord is the life of His saints, and His life endures forever.  He is our endurance, and our faithfulness, and His power and faithfulness never fails.  He is our love and compassion, and His love and compassion know no bounds.  He is our Word, and His Word always accomplishes the purposes for which it is sent.  He is our King and our Savior, and He reigns and saves forever.

Blessed be the God of our salvation, now and forevermore.  Amen.

The Value of Today: Meditiations on Hebrews 4

Days come and go, some faster it seems than others.  When I was a kid, days seemed to last forever, and weeks, months, or years were insanely long periods of time.  When I look at the calendar today, I’m shocked to see the year nearly spent, and wondering how I will do all I need to do in the remaining couple months before New Year’s Day.  There’s something about age and maturity, that grows our appreciation of the value of a day… and of course, that same age and maturity, can make us leap way beyond the day we’re in, and focus on days either long before us, or long gone behind us.

                This enigma was not unknown in the ancient world, either.  St. Paul writes about the value of a day in his letter to the Hebrews—and not just any day, but TODAY.  Today, the Apostle writes, if you will hear the voice of Jesus Christ and believe His Gospel of salvation for you, you will live in Him by grace through faith.  Today…

                There’s a mystery at work in creation, and St. Paul puts his finger on it in a very inspired way, never having studied advanced physics or cosmology.  Time is a peculiar construct of God, and one of great grace and mercy for us.  In the beginning He created us to be infinite beings in perfect communion with Him, but after the Fall, we suffer with the consequence of our sin and death in ways that are ugly painful.  Most of us have things in our past that we would rather forget, and wish had never happened.  Imagine the pain of having such a past, and knowing that it was always accessible, and always before your eyes—not just in the sense of remembering it, but as if it was always present.  Likewise, many of us worry about the future, and the thousands upon thousands of variables that can either help or harm our endeavors—imagine if all of those future days and moments were present to you, and you had to grapple with them all at once.  It would be a horrible burden to bear, never escaping the past nor the future, as all time pressed upon us in a single moment.

                We should remember, however, that for God, this is exactly how time is.  For Him, all time is eternally present.  Everything we perceive as past, present, and future, God perceives immediately as present.  That means, that when He bears your burdens in this present moment, He is really bearing them right now.  And for all those past moments, where your sin and evil broke forth into the world, demanding the sacrifice of His Son to save you… those moments are all present to Him, too.  And all your future moments, those that are both good and ill, He perceives in His eternal present, preserving you in and through them, though from your perspective, they haven’t happened yet.  Our loving God chooses to bear the burden of our sin, death, and suffering across all time and all space, while He grants a blessed rest to His people:  to us, He gives the gift of Today.

                Today, you can hear His voice of love from the Cross of His Son, speaking forgiveness and life to you forever.  Today, you can repent of the evil you have done, turning from your darkness by the power of His Word, toward the Light of Jesus Christ.  Today, you can be unburdened from your sin, receiving grace from the Son of God, who in His flesh nailed your sins and mine to His Holy Cross.  Today, you can believe and live forever.  Today becomes your first and never-ending day of eternal communion with your Creator, an infinite life of joy and blessedness, found in your Savior, Jesus Christ.  While God bears your burden, you are eternally free, Today… for Today, the love of God in Christ Jesus comes to you, that you might live in Him by grace through faith forever.  Give thanks to God for the blessing of Today!  For Today, the Kingdom of God comes near to you, and this eternal Today shall never end.  Glory be to God on High—The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, who have worked for us so great a salvation, which comes to us Today.  Amen.

The Perseverance of the Saints: A Meditation on Hebrews 3

I’m sure we all know someone who has mused about this subject, whether they knew much about the formal doctrine, or not.  I’ve heard the question posed as, “How do I know I’m one of the elect?” or, “Am I still a Christian if I’ve blown it regarding (fill-in-the-blank)?” or, “Do I really have enough faith, and is my commitment to Christ enough to really be saved?”  At some point in our Christian lives, I think most of us have grappled with this kind of question.  Somewhere near the root of that concern, is whether or not Jesus has really saved me… or, if I’m just deluding myself, and God has already given up on me… or, I think my salvation is hanging by a thread, and I’m afraid that if I goof up just one more time, God will cut His losses on me.

                If it gives any comfort, Christians have worried about these same things, from the time of the Apostles forward.  In the reading from Hebrews 3, St. Paul might even be seen to bait this question, when he points to the ancient Israelites as an example of those to whom the promise of God had come, but who abandoned their faith in God’s promise, and therefore were cut off from that same promise.  It makes one wonder, just what is necessary on my part, to keep God from cutting ME off?  What is the awful thing that I must avoid, so that God doesn’t leave me to die in the desert, like He did an entire generation of Hebrews?

                Like everything with St. Paul, the whole matter comes down to faith and grace… because, at root, salvation isn’t about what we do or don’t do, but rather what Christ does for us.  This was the same rule that God put in place from the very beginning, and it was the rule of salvation to the ancient Hebrews:  the just shall live by faith.  When the Hebrews were called out of their slavery in Egypt, it was God who did the calling and the delivering—the people simply had to believe and trust in God their Savior.  When Christ comes to fulfill the Law, and to save us from sin, death, and the devil, it is He who does the calling and the saving—ours is simply to believe and trust the promise of God in Jesus Christ.  With such faith comes grace, which is the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation.  With such faith, comes our triumph over fear, over the devil, and over every evil thing.  With such faith, everything that Jesus won for the world as He hung dead on that Cross, is delivered to us, so that not only have we died with Him, but also our new lives are hidden with Him forever.  The author of Life and Salvation becomes our Live and our Salvation through faith in His loving work of redemption for us.  What we cannot earn, He earns, and gives to us freely.

                So, if Christ has done all to call us and save us, where should we look for the promise of our perseverance to the end?  Where should we look for the assurance that we, too, shall join the ranks of the saints and angels in heaven, eventually to be resurrected unto life everlasting in the New Heaven and the New Earth?  Again, and forever, it is Jesus.  He is the author and the perfector of our faith, and it is He who both began this good work of salvation in us, and shall complete His good work in the time He has appointed.  If we have been saved by grace through faith in the Son of God, why should we look to anyone other than Jesus for our perseverance?  And if we continue to look to Jesus, why should we look to Him with anything but faith and trust?  And if we believe and trust the promise of God in Jesus Christ, why should we expect anything other than grace, which forgives and preserves us unto life everlasting?

                In the formal doctrine of the Perseverance of the Saints, we remember the simple truth, that Jesus not only saves us now, but He saves us forever, using the same divine means He established from the foundation of the world:  the just shall live by faith.  Will some stop believing, and find themselves cut off from grace?  Perhaps.  But the same Gospel is preached to those who have fallen, as it is to those who stand:  believe on the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved.  Salvation, from Justification through Sanctification and eventually Glorification, is all the work of our Savior, Jesus Christ.  Believe Him when He says to you, that He has come into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.  He has come for you—not to torment or trick or toy with you—but to save you.  Believe Him, and live.  Amen.

Reformation Day Reflection: Rebels without a clue

I remember this phrase thrown about a lot in my youth, as a twist on the famous James Dean movie about a Rebel Without a Cause.  While a rebel without a cause knows what he’s rebelling against in general but just doesn’t have anything to direct his rebellious spirit against at the moment, a rebel without a clue was generally a quip made against someone who was in rebellion for no particular reason or with no particular ends.   A clueless rebel could be anything from pitiful to laughable, or even dangerously wild.  A rebel without a clue just likes to fight.

                As we approach Reformation Day on the 31^st of October, it’s pretty tempting for Lutherans to act like rebels—tearing down what is traditional, or what may smell of being “catholic,” and imagining that such rebellion is both our birthright and our purpose.  We’re protestants, right?  Let’s get to protesting!  But what if I told you, that Lutherans are not really protestants nor rebels, particularly in the way that those terms are bandied about in the church today… what if I told you, there’s much more to being a Lutheran Christian, than simply being a rebel or a protestor.

                If we read the Lutheran Confessions, which our forefathers penned during the controversies of the 16^th century in Germany, you’ll notice something peculiar.  Not only do the Reformers note their opposition to false doctrines and dangerous practices of the time, but they also affirm what is true, and right, and good.  There is both affirmation of the good, and rejection of the ill.  Lutherans were not anarchists looking for something burn down or destroy—on the contrary, Lutherans were seeking to shore up what was good in the church, while weeding out what was not.  Neither Luther nor his comrades were out to rebel against Christ’s Church, but rather, to be faithful to Christ and serve the Church, by reforming it more to the image of Christ and His Word.

                Of course, at their time, the Pope asserted his divine right to control every living thing on earth, from political kingdoms to every individual Christian.  The Lutheran Reformers rejected that idea as unbiblical, and contrary to the spirit of Christ.  For having said so, a tyrannical pope and his minions, declared the Lutherans rebels, and put them under the ban excommunication.  Since that time, some Lutherans have embraced that label of rebel, and used it to justify all sorts of bad ideas… from prejudice and bigotry against non-Lutherans, to rebelling even against the Apostles and Prophets of Holy Scripture, and ultimately against Christ Himself.  Living as a rebel might seem cool to our worldly and fleshly minds, but in God’s Kingdom, Christ doesn’t have much good to say about rebels… in fact, the chief of rebels, Lucifer, is destined for the Lake of Fire, together with all his co-conspirators.

                As we approach this Reformation Day, I encourage you to meditate with me, on the not-so-rebellious nature of our Christian calling as Lutherans.  Ponder for a while, what it means to affirm everything that Holy Scripture teaches, no matter how hard it may be to hold onto—and likewise, to reject everything that Holy Scripture rejects, no matter how easy it would be to hang onto it.  Think of what it means to build up the Body of Christ, which is the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, rather than tearing down its venerable walls and burning down its ancient forms.  Consider what it means to weed out the vineyard of Christ’s Church, rather than hacking the ancient vines to the ground.

                I wager that what you’ll find, is that you have more friends—more brothers and sisters—than you thought you did, scattered in places you didn’t expect.  Some of those brothers and sisters might seem a little wonky, some downright strange, but we remember with the authors of the Lutheran Confessions, that where the faithful gather around Christ in Word and Sacrament, there is the One Church of Christ—spread across time and space, yet united in the One Lord and Savior of us all.

                So, there’s my challenge.  Rather than considering ourselves rebels (with or without causes or clues,) may we think of ourselves as stewards, servants, and keepers of the Word of Christ—born from above by Water and Spirit, living by grace through faith in the Son of God.  With eyes focused thus on Christ our Savior, you might be surprised to see how many others are gathered together with you, in Him.  May the Lord God Almighty, bless and keep His whole household of faith.  Amen.

Meditation on Psalm 14

A Meditation on Psalm 14:

“The fool has said in his heart, there is no God.”

I would imagine that much of what the world thinks these days is shocking to those who hear it—heck, it shocks me regularly.  Things that wouldn’t be whispered in public 50 years ago, are now screamed out from every media venue, and things once only done under the cover of darkness, are now common in the midday sun.  The world is changing, and our cultural perspectives or values are changing right along with it.

            But then again, the world is always changing… in the same old ways it always has.  One generation will tolerate one kind of evil, and another generation will tolerate something else.  50 years ago, living together before marriage was a horrible taboo, but pumping poisonous chemicals into the local river was barely blinked at.  Today, sex any time and any place between almost any persons is generally accepted, while endangering a peculiar toad will stop a major highway building program.  The world is always bouncing around in its opinions regarding what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is evil.  That’s because the world is running on human wisdom, which in the long run, is pretty dumb.  The new atheistic movements of our day are quick to condemn anyone who believes in God, or in the Word He has given to us in the Bible, particularly if we desire to have a public voice or opinion—but they are also very concerned that their own rights to free speech and protection are guarded as holy virtues.

            My dear friends, do not be surprised, when the fools around us say in their hearts, that there is no God… or when they discard His Word, and look for something else to entertain themselves with.  God said it would be so, because He knows what is in mankind—He knows the depth of our sin, the blindness of our eyes, and the hardness of our hearts.  He’s been dealing with us ever since the beginning when He created us, watched us fall into sin and death, and then worked out our salvation through Christ Jesus His only Son.  God knows what is in man, and since He loves us so greatly, He did not abandon us to the foolishness we create around us, every day.

            For you and I were once dead in our trespasses and sins, but now we live by grace through faith in the Son of God.  Rather than marveling at the blindness and foolishness of the world, we should have compassion on them, and pray for them.  Remember, that if it were not for the Word of God working on our hearts to create faith, we would be just as blind and just as foolish, casting away God and His Word, and trading it for the foul bowl of soup our human hearts concoct on their own.  Living by grace through faith, that same Word which enlivened us, can enliven the whole world.  And what a beautiful blessing it is, that God has ordained to have His Word brought out into the darkness of the world, through the saints He has called into His marvelous light!

            You are a city on a hill, a light on a lampstand—you are those through whom the Living Lord of Glory shines, that all might be drawn to salvation in Jesus Christ.  His Word has washed you, enlivened you, called you to daily faith and daily repentance, Justified you, Sanctified you, and will guard you for eternity.  This is the Light which shines in the darkness, which no darkness can overcome.  May the Light of Christ so shine through you, that the world may see Jesus in you—that they may hear His Word of redemption, so that they may repent, believe, and live.  To God be the glory, in this age, and unto ages of ages.  Amen.